Samuel Cate Prescott was a professor at M.I.T.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology). He was one of the top food scientists in the world. His dream wasn't just making food safe but ideal. A contemporary Boston Daily Advertiser story on him even predicted that one day, thanks to his hard work, the "application of growth-producing rays will bring forth cows the size of brontosauri, roosters the size of pterodactyls."

The National Coffee Roasters Association (a group that had long been searching for a novel way to boost coffee sales) decided the publicity campaigns weren't enough, they needed "a college education". So they brought their attention to this Prescott guy. They promised a state-of-art coffee research laboratory and staff, if he would uncover the scientifically exact way of creating the Perfect Cup of Coffee. He accepted.

He used the latest technology to bring coffee's Platonic ideal down to earth. The method was quite simple: He will make the coffee every way possible, and get "professional" taste tester to judge the outcome.

They tried out all the possible variables:

• Brewing in pots made of copper, aluminium, nickel, glass and other materials.

• They dripped, pressed and percolated it

• played with the temperatures

• different grinds

• and steeping times.

Every day, Prescott went to the MIT's cafeteria, with a tray of freshly brewed "scientific" coffee, cream and sugar. Fifteen women, the "tasting squad" shared their experiences with him, and Prescott adjusted his brewing accordingly.

Three years and an enormous amount of coffee later, he knew that coffee could not be improved, so he shared his results, a set of precise rules as unbendable as the law of gravity:

1. Use one tablespoon of freshly ground coffee for every eight ounces of water.

2. Force these grounds through water that is a few degrees short of boiling, inside a glass or earthenware container.

3. Never, ever boil or reheat coffee, and never reuse the grounds.

Finally, as it turned out, brewing the coffee of the gods was almost as easy as making toast. Anyone can do it. The roasters rushed to publicize the results, while Prescott decided to try to make the best candy, milk, cow, ice cream or banana.

His guidelines for the Perfect Cup of Coffee reached the general public, and it still holds today.

Coffee stories, and barista training